first artists 57
on a wall in El Castillo Cave in Spain was re-
cently dated to about 41,000 years ago, tantaliz-
ingly close to a time when only Neanderthals are
known to have been in western Europe. Perhaps
they, not us, were the first cave artists.
But most of the cave paintings in southern
France and Spain were created after the Nean-
derthals disappeared. Why there? Why then? One
clue is the caves themselves—deeper and more
extensive than the ones in the Ach and Lone
River Valleys of Germany or the rock shelters of
Africa. Tito Bustillo in northern Spain is a half
mile from one end to the other. El Castillo and
other caves on Monte Castillo dive, twist, and
turn into the ground like enormous corkscrews.
France’s Lascaux, Grotte du Renne, and Chauvet
run football fields deep into the rock, with mul-
tiple branches and cathedral-like chambers.
Perhaps the explosion of creativity we see on
the walls of these caverns was inspired in part by
their sheer depth and darkness—or rather, the
interplay of light and dark. Illuminated by the
flickering light from fires or stone lamps burn-
ing animal grease, such as the lamps found in
Lascaux, the bumps and crevices in the rock walls
might suggest natural shapes, the way passing
clouds can to an imaginative child. In Altamira,
in northern Spain, the painters responsible for
the famous bison incorporated the humps and
bulges of the rock to give their images more life
and dimension. Chauvet features a panel of four
horse heads drawn over subtle curves and folds in
a wall of receding rock, accentuating the animals’
snouts and foreheads. Their appearance changes
according to your perspective: One view pres-
ents perfect profiles, but from another angle the
horses’ noses and necks seem to strain, as if they
are running away from you. In a different cham-
ber a rendering of cave lions seems to emerge
from a cut in the wall, accentuating the hunch
in one animal’s back and shoulders as it stalks its
unseen prey. As our guide put it, it is almost as if
some animals were already in the rock, waiting
to be revealed by the artist’s charcoal and paint.
In his book La Préhistoire du Cinéma, film-
maker and archaeologist Marc Azéma argues that
some of these ancient artists were the world’s first
animators, and that the artists’ superimposed
images combined with flickering firelight in the
pitch-black caves to create the illusion that the
paintings were moving. “ They wanted to make
these images lifelike,” says Azéma. He has re-
created digital versions of some cave images that
illustrate the effect. The Lion Panel in Chauvet’s
deepest chamber is a good example. It features
the heads of ten lions, all seemingly intent on
their prey. But in the light of a strategically posi-
tioned torch or stone lamp, these ten lions might
be successive characterizations of just one lion,
or perhaps two or three, moving through a story,
much like the frames of a flip-book or animated
film. Beyond the lions stands a cluster of rhi-
noceroses. The head and horn of the top one are
repeated staccato-like six times, one image above
the other, as if thrusting upward, its whole body
shuddering with multiple outlines.
Azéma’s interpretation fits with that of emi-
nent prehistorian Jean Clottes—the first scientist
to enter Chauvet, only days after its discovery.
Clottes believes the images in the cave were in-
tended to be experienced much the way we view
movies, theater, or even religious ceremonies to-
day—a departure from the real world that trans-
fixed its audience and bound it in a powerful
shared experience. “It was a show!” says Clottes.
Thousands of years later you can still feel the
power of that show as you walk the chambers
of the cave, the sound of your own breath heavy
in your ear, the constant drip, drip of the water
falling from the walls and ceilings. In its rhythm
you can almost make out the thrum of ancient
music, the beat of the dance, as a storyteller casts
the light of a torch upon a floating image, and
enthralls the audience with a tale. j
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The Search for the
World’s Oldest Art